THE PROFESSION OF FORESTRY. 



An address delivered before the students of Yale University. 

 (Reprinted from the Yale Alumni Weekly by permission. Revised.) 



BY GIFFORD PINCHOT, FORESTER OF THE U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



THE subject matter of the profession 

 of Forestry is equally distinct from 

 street tree-planting on the one side 

 and landscape architecture on the other. 

 It has to do with wooded regions, with the 

 productiveness of forests, chiefly through 

 conservative lumbering, and, in the treeless 

 parts of the United States, with planting 

 for economic reasons. Except for a com- 

 paratively small area of desert land in the 

 West, the whole land surface of the 

 United States is included in the possible 

 field of work for the forester. How ex- 

 tensive this field is will appear from the 

 fact that the woodland in farms alone, in 

 1890, comprised more than 200,000,000 

 acres, or more than four times the area of 

 the National forest reserves. 



THE OPENING. 



The first question asked by a man who 

 has in mind forestry as his profession 

 usually concerns the chance of finding 

 work when hispreparatory study is ended. 

 The sources of demand for trained for- 

 esters at the moment are comparatively 

 few, but they are increasing with remark- 

 able rapidity. The great lumbering con- 

 cerns, such as the International Paper 

 Company, which controls more than i,- 

 000,000 acres of Spruce land, are rapidly 

 getting to see that it is worth their while 

 to employ trained foresters. One Yale 

 man has been employed by the company 

 just mentioned ; another college graduate, 

 not a Yale man, has charge for a com- 

 pany of certain phases of its lumbering in 

 Maine ; and five lumber companies have 

 already applied to the Bureau of Forestry 

 for working plans for the management of 

 their tracts. The demand from this 

 source may be expected to increase very 



greatly within the next ten years, as the 

 great holders of timber land come to 

 realize more generally that conservative 

 lumbering pays better than the destructive 

 methods now employed. 



In a similar way mining companies will 

 eventually find it to their interest to em- 

 ploy foresters. The owners of game 

 parks have already taken steps in this 

 direction. Private owners of large areas 

 such as Biltmore Forest in North Caro- 

 lina, the property of George W. Vander- 

 bilt, Ne-Ha-Sa-Ne Park in the Adiron- 

 dacks, owned by W. Seward Webb, a 

 Yale man, and the contiguous land held 

 by the Hon. Wm. C. Whitney, another 

 Yale man, are already under the manage- 

 ment of trained men. The need of for- 

 esters to care for the forest interests of the 

 several States is already making itself felt. 

 States such as New York, with its mil- 

 lion and a quarter acres of forest reserves ; 

 Pennsylvania, with its newly-created De- 

 partment of Forestry and its growing State 

 forest reserves ; Michigan, with its Forest 

 Commission and its State reserves which 

 are being rapidly formed ; North Caro- 

 lina, vvith its Geological Survey thor- 

 oughly interested in forest study ; New 

 Jersey and Maryland, of which the same 

 is true ; Maine, New Hampshire and 

 several others, with their Forest Com- 

 missions ; Minnesota, with its Fire War- 

 den law, its State Park and the beginning of 

 a system of State forest reserves, and other 

 States are rapidly creating a demand for 

 foresters, and would be doing so still more 

 rapidly if men were available to do the 

 work. Finally, the National Government 

 already employs a considerable number of 

 men, and is rapidly extending the work 

 which requires them. The General Land 



